Look at the notes in your CRM and review them to determine where the prospect is in their decision making journey. If it’s your first meeting, give them a call or send them an email with some questions that will help you figure it out allowing for a more targeted call plan.

Determine the Outcome You Want

If you start with your desired outcome in mind, you can make questions that will help you get there with the prospect. As sales professionals, one of our main jobs is to ask thought provoking questions. But how will we know what ideas to provoke in our prospect’s mind if we don’t know what we want to accomplish in the meeting?

To set goals for the meeting, ask yourself questions such as:

What are you looking to get out of this meeting with your prospect?

How will you know the opportunity is moving forward?

Do you want a follow-up meeting to show them your platform?

Or are you looking for a buying commitment from them by the end of the conversation?

The outcome you are seeking from the call will determine the questions you ask and the information you should be prepared to share.

An agenda is something that can be adjusted as the call goes on. After all, no sales call goes exactly as planned. However, it is important to think about an agenda ahead of time and know exactly what steps you will take at what point in the call. Your prospect will also appreciate the fact that there is a sense of structure to the meeting.

Prepare Questions Ahead of Time

As I mentioned above, no sales call ever goes perfectly, and we have to improvise as the meeting goes on. If the prospect shares information that was previously unknown, you need to respond with new questions that incorporate this new information, which can be very difficult. This is why it can be useful to plan a few back-up questions ahead of time.

You can do this through research on your prospect. Read about the latest company news. Find your prospects on LinkedIn and learn about their background. There are plenty of situations where we get stuck and run out of road during a call. This is when the prepared questions come in handy the most. If you plan questions ahead of time, you know that you will never have to be frozen during the meeting because you can’t think of where to go next.

Conclusion

We need to provide value to our prospective customers during the sales cycle itself. Preparing and planning ahead for our sales calls is the best way to ensure that we deliver on that promise well before the prospect even thinks about signing the check.

Want to train your team in proven prospecting techniques? Check out our comprehensive guide to sales prospecting, based on an analysis of 100,000 sales calls.